The Sting of Old Betrayals
As I pushed open the door to the bar, a clear chime rang out, strangely at odds with the dingy atmosphere. For a brief moment, every patron inside turned to look at us. Under normal circumstances they would have spared us a glance and gone back to their drinks, but this time their stares lingered, openly unpleasant, as if they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. Maybe it was the novelty of a girl who didn’t even clear 150 centimeters walking into a place like this. Honestly, even I found it bizarre. In the old days I would have been thrown out before I crossed the threshold.
“Just a beer.”
“Ah… yes? Um…”
The bartender hesitated at first, but the moment money hit his palm he gave a quick nod. It was the maturity bleeding through my bearing that convinced him. The difference between a real child and someone who merely wore a child’s face was obvious from the first word, the first gesture. I dropped into a chair like my strings had been cut. Liam sat down across from me with careful, almost timid movements and ordered champagne.
“Senior…”
Liam opened his mouth, but I offered nothing in return. My thoughts were still a snarled mess. Better to drink first and sort them out later. So we waited in silence until the drinks arrived, then spent a long time simply pouring them down our throats without a word between us.
“Huu…”
I don’t know how long we drank like that. A faint heat had begun to bloom beneath my skin. Of course the buzz would burn off quickly for me, but for the moment I welcomed even the illusion of drunkenness. Liam’s face had taken on a slight flush as well. He seemed drunk enough.
I spoke first, choosing my words with care.
“Why did you do that to me?”
Wrong opening. I had meant to begin more gently, but the question had already escaped. There was no taking it back. Liam paused, then answered.
“It was all for you, Senior.”
“Ha…?”
My eyebrows twitched. I had sworn to remain calm, cool, rational, yet irritation flared anyway. My voice came out sharper than I intended.
“If it was for my sake, there were gentler ways, weren’t there? Something moderate instead of ripping my whole body away, right?”
Moderate. What exactly? I had no concrete example in mind; I simply spat the word. The general sense was enough. This time Liam gave no reply. No comment, then. The atmosphere soured.
I rested my forehead on the table and ran a finger along the beer glass, tracing the cold beads of condensation. A classic glass. Classic…
Where did it all go wrong…?
I watched Liam’s face warp and ripple through the golden liquid. I had believed no lingering attachments remained, no feelings at all, yet an ugly emotion was crawling up from the pit of my chest.
I had rationalized it, hadn’t I? He couldn’t disobey orders from above, so he had no choice but to abandon me—abandon us Hounds. There was plenty to say about how he had tried to betray us without so much as blinking, despite being my dedicated mechanic, but I had let it go. The relationship between Liam and me had always been cooler than most mechanic-Hound pairings anyway.
Given how I lived for extreme solo operations and my social skills had rotted away, his awkward goodwill had probably been the best he could manage. I had no questions. None. And yet the resentment born from that betrayal refused to die.
Of course, when I considered the root cause—the corporate purge—maybe the company deserved the first share of blame. But they had their own logic. It felt like a natural disaster; I no longer even wanted to fight it. The corporation had won its war against the state and discarded us the moment we lost our usefulness. We were too dangerous, they said. That was enough. What more reason was required?
Hounds were dangerous. That much was true.
Still, it hurt. Understanding something and accepting it are not the same thing. Above all, I resented Liam—my personal mechanic, a comrade who had fought beside me for more than a decade—yet who had so naturally taken the corporation’s side.
Other Hounds said their mechanics had sensed something wrong and realized the betrayal early. I only learned of it secondhand. What the hell was that? Had Liam ever truly seen me as a comrade? Even if our relationship had been comparatively distant, really? Had those ten-plus years been nothing but wasted time?
I finally broke the silence.
“Listen, Liam…”
I tilted my head so I could see him past the beer glass. His face was thoroughly red now.
“Honestly, I’m pretty hurt. Couldn’t you have at least said something nice? Even if it was just empty comfort?”
Liam lifted his head for a moment, then answered in a flat voice.
“I gave you that advice because I was seriously thinking of you, Senior. I couldn’t say those words even as empty courtesy.”
The same answer as before. I spoke again, carrying the same pointless attachment.
“That’s why I said even meaningless, hollow words would have been fine.”
“Senior.”
Liam’s flushed face turned toward me.
“You’re supposed to view the situation objectively. You used to be good at that, weren’t you?”
“Objectively. Sure. What exactly? How?”
“Hounds were dangerous. Truly. I couldn’t tell you it was okay, not even as a lie.”
I clamped my mouth shut. I had heard the words I hated most. The company had repeated it endlessly while claiming they needed to eliminate our danger—right before they stuffed us into these bodies.
We are dangerous. They used us so well during the war, and only after everything ended… They never once said they would take responsibility for our service. They simply declared the danger neutralized, swapped us into this weak, cheap artificial flesh, and threw us away. The sole compensation was a monthly allowance that barely kept us fed.
I hung my head. Who enjoys being called a monster? Was it really that difficult to take my side even once?
Words vanished between us again. We simply drank for a long while. By the time we noticed, streetlights outside had begun flickering on one by one. The buildings here were all so tall you could never tell whether the sun was up or down, so we measured time by them instead of clocks. It seemed the day had already slipped into evening.
Empty beer bottles and a wine glass lay scattered across our table. I came back to myself and looked around. The only people still here were those who had drunk themselves senseless. Mostly homeless, along with discharged soldiers missing an arm or a leg. The air carried a sour smell—like a living body in the early stages of decay.
I set my glass down with a clack and stood.
“Let’s go. It’s too late.”
Liam stared at me blankly before rising as well. His steps already tangled; he wasn’t in much better shape. I had only meant to drink enough to feel a buzz, but I had gone too far.
We settled the bill and stepped out of the bar.
Resentment kept swelling inside me. I couldn’t contain it. Just looking at Liam’s face made the fury I had tried to bury roar back to life. Why? Why did he have to treat me that way of all people? Had we never even been comrades? Were those ten-plus years completely meaningless?
If I was honest, Liam’s words might have been roughly correct. I certainly hadn’t blended into this peace; I had been living like a corpse. Impure elements that cannot assimilate are bound to cause problems eventually. The corporation might have been right. Liam’s insight might have been accurate.
But. But right now I simply needed someone to dump this rootless resentment on. I didn’t have the confidence to shoulder all this rage and fury alone. So I pathetically rationalized instead.
Liam—who had been nothing more than one face among the countless human masses—swiftly inflated in my mind until he became absolute evil.
After walking together for some time, we stopped in a corner of an alley to smoke. Neither of us suggested it; we simply did it, as though we had arranged it in advance.
“…!”
At some point I came back to myself and realized we were shouting at each other. Our voices kept rising, louder and louder. How had things reached this point? Was it because Liam and I had never truly gotten along? Was it my fault? Or had the way he ignored his comrades and only wagged his tail at the military been that unbearable?
We fought on. There was no sign it would end. Then, in a flash, Liam—unable to control his anger—slapped me across the face with everything he had. In the past I would have stood firm and knocked him down instead, but now my light body simply slammed into the alley wall with a dull thud and collapsed onto a pile of trash.
I didn’t even think to touch my stinging cheek. I simply rose in a daze.
“You were the one who told me to view the situation objectively, so why—!”
Liam still hadn’t calmed down. He shouted at the top of his lungs, jabbing a finger at me. I stayed silent for a long time, simply listening to the accusations. Truth was mixed in, so I couldn’t dismiss them as mere slander. But humans can’t remain rational forever. Everything around me was screaming. The neon signs flared and screamed. The whole world was screaming.
In that monstrous landscape, Liam’s own monstrous shadow loomed far above me, flickering.
“……”
It was impulsive. Or rather, everything that had been piling up finally burst.
The alien peace that never felt like a place I could stay. The alien body that poured fuel onto the heart of a ground-crawling crow who could find nowhere to belong. The anger toward Liam for shoving me into this flesh. The anger toward Liam who never once took my side, who only ever wagged his tail at the corporation.
My headache was excruciating. I could make excuses. Maybe because I hadn’t taken my medicine, or because I had poured far more alcohol into myself than I should have. A pain like my skull would split open had seized me completely.
Liam, pointing, shouting down at me from more than two heads higher, looked like a monster. I resented this pathetic body. I cursed myself for being unable to fight, unable to prove my worth. The anxiety was unbearable.
Bang!
Unconsciously. Faster than the blink of an eye, I drew the pistol from inside my jacket and fired at Liam. The voice that had been shaking the world with its roar cut off for an instant. Then a scream that sounded like a curse filled the alley.
Liam was rolling on the ground in front of me, clutching his right side. He wasn’t spitting curses at me—he simply held the wound and groaned. At this point he could have hurled every insult he knew. I silently slid the pistol back into my jacket.
It was fortunate I had fired out of habit. Had I done it consciously, I probably would have put the bullet through his skull. Liam’s screams gradually subsided. He seemed to be enduring the pain. I left him there and walked out of the alley. The neon signs that had been screaming from every direction quieted a little.
“Life really is fucked.”
Should I feel relieved simply because I hadn’t killed anyone? I quietly took out my phone and called an ambulance. Then I staggered away.
It looked like even the last thread of human connection I had left had been severed today.